“Molten Light” by CJ Peradilla

◙

YOU TWO ARE FIGHTING AGAIN, and I am caught in between, eclipsed by your shadows. I try, at best, to keep my voice to myself, let the words escape from my lungs through the smoke of my cigarette, let the gin soak my thoughts into acid disinterest. At some point in the argument he drills his finger through the air to point at me, spits out I’m the one to blame. I offer him no response. You mimic my silence, feed my guilt.

Later that week you would slap me, not less than three times, storm out the door, crying, wordless. I close my eyes, inhale, to reach peace, and resume wrapping the third anniversary gift I meant to give you both last Thursday (when the spat began). I wear my bifocals, dip my fountain pen in smooth blue ink, write down a note. To the best people I know, it says. A few cursive strokes mask the lie in my words, and I seal them in an envelope.

In the train ride sleep eludes me. I focus my attention on the wild sugarcane in the roadside, notice that the closer to vision an object is, the quicker it seems to displace itself, move away. I cannot distinguish the sky from the earth; smog cloaks the outskirts of the city.

A man in a hoodie sits beside me, steals a few glances from behind his book. He offers small talk; I politely express my wish to nap. My eyes shut close and I hear your voice as the train wheels turn on the rails, over, and over, and over, and over. I do not fall asleep.

You do not see me for the rest of the weekend, nor do you call. I sit in my mother’s living room, in a house with no Wi-Fi, much less cell reception. Just leave them, mother urges me, cup of tea in hand. I shake my head—not that simple, I say. Escape is a charade I enjoy.

☽

IT TAKES EXACTLY NINE DAYS for him to call and apologize for his drunken outburst. “It’s fine,” I say, as I pinch the thirty-six stitches on the back of my hand. I feel a twinge in my temples. We talk about the weather, of arts and culture, innovations in augmented reality (computers fascinated us); we talk of anything but her. On speaker phone he says hi to mother and hangs up. I place the telephone back on its dock, dial in your number, put the phone down.

Mother ushers me to sit, draws my hand closer to peel off the gauze, dabs a Betadine- soaked cotton ball on the wound. Her hand is gentle, yet firm. It’s sewed shut, I say to her, and laugh (a little). I know, mother laughs a bit as well, but you know, it’s better safe than sorry. I’m heading to the market, mother says, try not to get hurt again. She kisses my forehead, ducks out the screen door. I watch the owner type jeep retreat from the house.

Outside, the rain begins to fall in pinprick droplets, thick foliage aglow. No word from you, still. I walk upstairs barefoot and the wooden floor chills my soles; the house seems grand when I’m alone. I reach the door to my room, hear my name through your voice. I pause.

This must be a dream, I say to myself, but nothing sounds realer than the echoes over the certificate-laden wall in front of me. You, I decide, are haunting me. I am reached by an epiphany—that only the living can haunt the [near-]living.

I open the door and an outpour of light pricks my eyes. The room is getting cold. From my duffel bag I retrieve a sweatshirt and socks, both yours, both presents. I shimmy into the sweatshirt; it covers more than half of my skin. (I would later only realize I am skin and bone—you are flesh.)

My room summons the wind, and, along with it, some of the rain, as I stand by the window. The smell of your perfume emerges from the petrichor.

❍

FOR THE FIFTH TIME THIS week he calls me and for the first time in a while, he mentions you. I assume it’s a slippage and ignore it; he insists on complaining about your annoying habits. You take too long to sleep, take too long to do makeup, take too long to get dressed.

I remember senior prom in high school, some seven years ago, when you hardly touched rouge. There was a fire in the city that night, near your home. You almost didn’t go—you said “a rented prom dress is embarrassing.” When I think about it, your dress did seem plain, loose at the waist—but you made it work. You looked good then, as you do now. Better than I do.

Interference noise returns me to the phone call. His voice is solid, sharp, his words without substance. I laugh at a joke he makes at your expense but I find it remotely amusing. Still, his concern merits my laughter. He tells me to come home soon, because you miss me. This time my laughter is real. It is not out of amusement, but of distrust.

I walk to the convenience store nearby. The shop owner, a friend of my mother’s, greets me with a smile. “Time passes by quickly,” she muses, and later she tells me how much I’ve grown. “But, dear, you need to put on some weight,” my mother’s kumare says, “try to eat more.” I simply nod, take a few bags of junk food off the shelves. On my way to the counter I decide to have a few smokes and ask for a carton of Marlboro reds. My mother’s kumare shoots me a few looks; I ignore her. I could care less—my smoking is no news to my mother.

The night is fast approaching. I watch the smoke from my lungs swirl into the air, dissolve into nothing. By nightfall I’ve finished the entire carton, so I head home.

After a week, I arrive back in my apartment at night, alone. You open the door as I turn the key. My feet will not move forward so you snatch my arm, trip my balance. I fall.

◯

THE SUMMER A YEAR AFTER you meet him is the first of our many camp outs, just the two of us. I bring my guitar, as usual, and you, your satin voice. On the hiking trail you make it your job to pick the wildflowers, fresh among the dry grass and the soft earth under our shoes.

We find ourselves in an open clearing before nightfall, light a fire, pitch our tents. Behind us the forest is dense with verdure, the sky overcast. I watch a rabbit take shelter, burrow itself in a heap of brushwood. The fireflies, hovering near the young Balete, start disappearing also.

“Looks like no bonfire music tonight,” you sit on a tree bark by your tent, strum the lower strings of the guitar to make a shrill note, kick moist dirt into the air.

“You might be right.”

We spend the night in my tent because yours had not been pitched well. I busy myself with a copy of Jose Garcia Villa’s book of poems (I forget the title—the cover is peeled off) and a bottle of warm beer.

You hum to the tune of Unchained Melody, sit up, whisper a curse.

“Do you have a pad on you?”

“In my duffel bag,” I laugh. As is your habit, you punch me on my shoulder.

“Don’t look,” flashlight in hand, you retreat to your blankets. “I’m changing.”

“I’ll turn off the light for you, if you want.” I turn to my book, put out the light.

The poem reads:

Have I sung?

Have I become soft, beautiful?

It takes no less than a few minutes for the rain to wash the dust off the earth.

***

I TURN THE DOORKNOB TWICE to make sure it is locked. We walk out into the night, hands in pockets, outpaced by the haloed moon. Littered with beer cans and cigarette butts and plastic bags, the street is narrow. Your arm grazes mine briefly, and then it doesn’t anymore.

From my pockets I fish out a cigarette, afterwards light it, and inhale. When I release the smoke the ground beneath me shifts, so I stop for a second. You watch me struggle against my coughing fit, touch my shoulder. “That’s what cancer tastes like,” you say, and urge me to quit. I nod in silence. You take the cigarette from my fingers, flick it at the road, crush it with your foot.

We say no more until we reach the playground.

The stars, I decide, seem dimmed by the clear sheen of the full moon. Crunching on the apple you “borrowed” from my kitchen counter, you sit on the swing, I on the bench adjacent. We are privy to this cosmic show and I feel, somewhat, that I’ve cheated the world.

“My fingertips are cold,” you say. I joke that you could use a cigarette; you face towards me, punch me on my shoulder. You take my hand and the cold melts into my palm. We breathe in the silence, the starless night, each other.

A dog reveals itself from the thicket of bushes behind the swing. We laugh—finally. You approach him. He retreats, if slightly, but a smile from you wins the stray over. He sits up, looks at the moon, then back at you. I watch you tousle his fur. Satisfied, the stray leaves.

This time you sit beside me on the bench and all I hear is your slow breathing.

Your eyes, creased from years of indecision, are bright, sharp, even, this time. I change my mind about the moon—yours are the orbs responsible for the death of starlight.

◑

THE FIRST TIME I FALL in love with a woman happens five years after I meet you, one year before you meet him. Mother does not know of me—I have yet to know of me.

I am nineteen years old and leaving an all-nighter at a friend’s house. It is three in the morning and hardly a person dares roam the streets. I check the road a second time; it is empty, so I decide to walk alone. The concrete stairway is coated with dust and gravel and I listen, intently, to the pavement crunch beneath me, when a shadow reveals itself from behind. I make out the silhouette of a woman, curly-haired, clad in a sweater and jeans, tall, slender. She steps away from her shadow and into the light, reveals the roundest pair of eyes that I’d ever seen.

“Care for a smoke,” she says in a questioning inflection, and stands beside me. Her perfume smells like the earth after rain. I am handed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

“No, thank you,” I respond, “I don’t really, you know…”

She is insistent and suddenly I cannot refuse, inhaling what I know had poisoned my father, until his lungs were twice as small as they had been.

“I’m trying to quit smoking,” she says, and nudges me a little.

“So instead, you’re offering cigarettes for free to people you don’t know?” I find myself laughing. I hardly laugh (especially after a sleepless night) but here I am. How easily I rewarded her that benediction.

“No,” she says. I shoot her a confused look. “Five pesos for a stick. I can give you an early morning discount, if you’d like, but the lowest I’d go is four-fifty.”

Another fit of laughter.

“You’re gullible,” Now, she looks at me, scans me from the face to the feet, shifts my stance through my shoulders. “I like that.”

***

HE IS OFF TO WORK (in the highbrow advertising firm he’d always patronized), and, having dropped you off, we find ourselves alone in my apartment. Over a bottle of red wine we try and discuss possible activities for the evening.

“How about spin the bottle?” I watch you swirl the wine in your glass.

“Are you drunk?” aiming for your face, I toss a throw pillow in your direction, miss on purpose. “We’re twenty-three years old. Besides, there’s just two of us.”

“Guess so,” for a minute you inspect your fingernails. “Do you have a speaker?”

“What?”

“A speaker,” you repeat, yanking my laptop from the coffee table in front of you. “Let’s do some low-key karaoke on the internet.”

“You know I don’t sing.”

“I know you don’t sing in front of people.”

“So, you’re not people?”

“Oh, I’m people; don’t be ridiculous,” you sit beside me, crowd the single-person armchair, wink. “But I’m people you tolerate.”

“Shut up,” I stand quick enough for my head to spin. “Let me look for that speaker.”

You follow me from behind, peek over my shoulder, nudge my cheek. I stub my toe on the table, trip on your foot, send us both falling to the floor.

Inches apart, our breaths are silent, restrained.

He knocks on the door, says he forgot to give you a goodbye kiss. I push you away.

☾

IT IS YOUR WEDDING DAY. I sit at the reception table with a few mutual friends, nodding and smiling politely at aunts and uncles and strangers. In the middle of the room the wedding cake stands a good six tiers from the ground and I can already tell from the gold luster trimming and the obnoxious MR. & MRS. cake topper that this was his idea.

I do not approach you, nor him. Instead I stay at the bar, away from the crowd, keep all the drinks to myself. Every now and then a friend we shared in college would walk up to me, ask about my job, whether I got married.

“I’m a registrar clerk,” is followed by a string of questions on pay, taxes, etc. To hasten the conversation I feed them what they want to hear.

Halfway through the party, you approach me, clad in the petals of your wedding gown. You make some random comment about my dress, or shoes, or hair—I forget. When we talk we refuse to look each other in the eyes.

“I can’t believe I’m married.”

You play with your earrings, the one I’d given you for your birthday last year, when for a few months you refused to talk to him.

“I know,” I decide I haven’t responded in the past minute, clear my throat, feel the sting from my drinks. “Me, too.”

“I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Sure.”

You walk away, back turned from me. This is the last I see of you.

***

THE DAY YOU MEET HIM is the day I decide to take you out to dinner, maybe spend the night somewhere we both don’t know, anything far from usual.

Instead, you suggest we stick with the typical weekend: coffee shop, you with your music, and I with my cigarettes. He works on an extra shift as a barista/waiter, serves us our drinks, smiles when by accident you look at him.

“So, I can’t come up with a new song,” you crumple a sheet of yellow paper, flick it at me. I unfurl the sad victim of your frustration, burn it with my lighter.

“Try to make a poem.”

“What?”

“Well, a poem’s supposed to be lyrical,” from what I recall. “In a way, it’s song-ish.”

“Okay,” two cups of coffee in hand, he walks up to us again, scratches at the back of his head, clears his throat.

“For you,” he manages to say, pushing a cup in front of you, another in front of me. A few years later he tells me he never intended to offer me a drink, but it seemed polite to do, since you and I were together.

“Oh, thanks.”

“Well well,” he walks away and I elbow your arm. “Looks like he likes you.”

“Right,” the tip of your pen is bent. It is your habit to chew on it. “You’re crazy.”

“No, really,” I light my cigarette, feel the smoke soothe my nerves. “Maybe write about him. You never know.”

“Okay, fine,” You inspect your pad of paper, discard the topmost sheet, chuck it towards me. “I don’t suppose it would hurt.”

Author bio

CJ Peradilla writes for a living. Her prose and poetry have appeared in DANAS, Otoliths, Sunday Times Magazine, and The Cabinet.